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webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the first week of August, 2017.

App sizes are out of controlAugust 01, 2017(comments)
An internet complains about bloat on his blog, which makes 77 HTTP requests per page load. Hackernews explains that it is not possible to understand how much disk space a given program takes, because computers are hard, and one Hackernews doubts that large corporations might hire morons. Nobody can figure out why the sizes Apple reports are unrelated to the sizes actually occupied, but they're sure willing to reconstruct the practice from guesswork.

Exa, a modern replacement for lsAugust 03, 2017(comments)
An internet reimplements ls(1) with missing functionality and more dependencies. The work is described as "small, fast, and portable"; the binary is 1.1mb stripped, the utility only reliably builds on Linux and MacOS, and the term "fast" is defined as "on par with ls". Hackernews spends some time sternly admonishing people who are not sufficiently impressed. Half of the comments are people arguing about whether computers should emit colors. The other half of the comments are people arguing about whether humans can read numbers. The Rust Evangelism Strike Force recommends several resources for people who would like to poorly reimplement other unix tools.

Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraudAugust 04, 2017(comments)
An expired Twitter meme is convicted of a crime. Hackernews used to hate this person until they viewed the person's vlog. Hackernews congratulate each other on this change of heart, mistaking it for critical thinking. Much fun is had reinventing securities laws, medical billing practices, psychological diagnoses, and the criminal justice system. None of the participants are affected in any way by any aspect of the topic at hand.

A checklist of marketing ideas for side projectsAugust 06, 2017(comments)
An internet posts a Guide to Spam. Hackernews is pleased that this particular guide includes more than just boring old email spam -- it really covers the Hackernews bases, including "harassing strangers over the phone," "harassing strangers in person," "tracking strangers over the internet," and "conning academics into linking to your website." As usual, "making something people want" is not in the plans.